Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats in response to what the German authorities described as Russia’s refusal to cooperate in a high-profile murder.
German intelligence and law enforcement agencies said that the killing of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a 40-year-old former Chechen rebel commander, who was shot in the head from behind in Berlin’s Kleiner Tiergarten park in August, was carried out by Russian agents on Kremlin’s orders.
Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats in response to what the German authorities described as Russia’s refusal to cooperate in a high-profile murder.
German prosecutors said that the Kremlin ordered the killing after requests from the Russian puppet regime that now rules Chechnya.
The facts so far:
· Prosecutors said there is “sufficient evidence” to indicate that the man’s murder was carried out on the behalf of the Russian state or by Chechnya.
· The German Foreign Ministry also announced that two employees at Russia’s embassy in Berlin had been designated personae non grata and were expelled.
· The names and positions of the diplomats were not given, although the ministry said it took the move after Russian authorities failed to “cooperate sufficiently” in the murder investigation.
· Russia’s foreign ministry called the expulsion move an “unfriendly, groundless step” and vowed to respond.
Immediately after the killing, the Berlin police detained a 49-year-old Russian national who rode a bicycle next to the victim, shooting him in the head and chest.
Khangoshvili, a Georgian of Chechen descent who was a commander of Chechen anti-Russian forces who fought Russia for the independence of Chechnya from Russia during the Second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009, was “classified as a terrorist by Russian authorities and persecuted as such,” according to German prosecutors.
He applied for asylum in Germany in 2016 after several attempts on his life, while he was living in Georgia, failed. DW notes that his asylum application was denied and he was slated for deportation.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer welcomed the federal prosecutor’s decision to take on the murder case. “That says something about the significance of this crime. The government is still discussing what further consequences we will draw from this,” he told a press conference in Berlin.”
Federal prosecutors in Germany take over investigations when there is a strong suspicion of involvement by a foreign state.
The Khangoshvili case follows more than a dozen cases in which critics and opponents of Vladimir Putin were assassinated both inside Russia and abroad. Last year, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent on British soil.
Source: Homeland Security News Wire
